27 September 2006

Today is Google's 8th Birthday. It's really interesting to see an 8 years old child having such effect on the whole world. Actually, I use Google's search engine all the time, and you know what, I prefer it to Yahoo for example just because of it's clean and simple interface. The simple interface loads quickly and this makes it the best choice for my browser's homepage. Gmail'sconversation view and displaying emails as threads is one of the features that makes me prefer it to Yahoo and Hotmail for example. The Web Clips and Chat are attractive features in Gmail too that other emails services don't have. There are zillions of other services made by Google every day.

But, many others keep asking, why do they offer all these services for free. According to what I consider the golden rule for life, "Nothing for free", there must be some hidden fees paid somewhere by someone. And here comes my friend's, let's call him S, conspiracy theory. Mr. S belives that Google offer us Gmail for free in order to store our emails search into them, find patterns about us, and know some of our valuable information, they do the same thing with our Google Talk conversations, Search keywords, etc. It may be the US government who is behind all this, or may be they just collect these info in order to sell them to the one who pays more. Since Google is my browser's homepage they can know the time I normally go online, they may collect the keywords I search for daily to know my interests, they may get from my Google Talk history some info about my friends and may be Credit Card number, Telephones (from the Gmail Address book), travel schedules, you name it.

Let me ask, why it's only Google who is suspected for gathering our info, doesn't Microsoft for example owns our machines via windows and they can simply collect as much info about us as they want. Yahoo, Hotmail, and many other email services can do the same thing with our emails too. We may keep on thinking of thousands of scenarios but then we will stop using the internet and may be just stop using computers, and even mobile phonse. We may also use Email clients to encrypt our emails, as well as web anonymizers in order to hide our identity while searching, but if you really belive in conspiracy theory you sure know that all these precautions are not enough. The only option left to us is to surrender to all those spys and information gathering systems everywhere around us, and pray to God that someday they get a virus on their systems and loose our info there.

25 September 2006

I've noticed lately that my new blog posts are not shown on Manalaa.net , which is an Egyptian blogs site aggregator. After some troubleshooting, and googling it came out the the blog atom feed is not working. The link "http://gr33ndata.blogspot.com/atom.xml", which I think the blog aggregator uses in order to get the new posts returns the following error "Invalid request URI". Blogspot team said here that it is a known issue, and they are on their way to solve it. They also suggested to use "http://gr33ndata.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full" instead till they fix the problem.

Updated - 27 September, 2:35 AM,
The link is now working fine, seems that they have fixed it now.

I've received the following comment on my post about "The pope Benedict XVI speech controversy", by an anonymous user. And here you are a part of it.

The second, very important issue was about God / Allah and His properties. B16 said, that Muslims believe in a completely transcedent God, free of all human determinations while Christians believe that God (the same one, btw) has ethics / morale conforming to the human one because in the Genesis (which is part of Muslim belief too, afaik) God creates human beings in His image, which doesn't mean, as Christians think, that God looked like a man but that He gave His ethics / morale to the human race. This, as Jews and Greek people understand, leads to the judgement of human deeds after death. How can a human being reach paradise if s/he doesn't know whats right or wrong in the eyes of the creator?

First of all I'd like to thank this anonymous user for pointing to such important issue, which is God's Justice according to the Islamic point of view. Actually what I've got from his comment is that the Islamic point of view for this subject differs than the other religions, where God is beyond Justice and Ethics, and His deeds are not always just according to our own morals and ethics. While Christians for example think that humans have inherited God's morals and that's why His deeds conform to our morals as humans.

The problem with non-muslims is that they don't know much about the Islamic Sects, especially those ones related to theology, or what we call here Elm El Kalam, علم الكلام , Science of Speech.

There were two major schools of Elm El Kalam, the Ash'ari school and the Mu'tazili one. And each of them have their own point of view regarding the subject of God's Justice. According to Murtaza Motahhari's book "Al Adl Al Elahi", العدل الإلهي , or Divine Justice, The Ash'aris belive that justice doesn't have a solid definition that can be used in order to evaluate God's deeds, as God is the creator of everything including morals and ethics and that's why He cannot be subject to a rule created by Himself. The Mu'tazilis on the other hand belive that Justice has its solid definition, and because God is just he makes His deeds and laws subject it. Which is by the way simillar some how to what Mr. Anonymous has called the Christians, Jews, and Greek people point of view.

The Mu'tazilis may not exsist today anymore, and there may be other Islamic Theological schools today other than those two, but they all share the same point of view whith either the Ash'aris or the Mu'tazilis. The Imami's (Shiits) for example share the same point of view with the Mu'tazilis in this subject. The Maturidis, Wahabis/Salafis [Fixme] on the other hand share the same point of view with the Ash'aris in it.

19 September 2006

The idea of this Tag, is to write a list of the top twelve - it may be more or less than a dozen - blogs you like most. They can also be the most recent blogs you have visited, or just your friends' blogs. You also write some brief about them, and they are supposed to do the same thing too.

Mia - Maria L Suarez - is an american blogger, who is used to change her blog design frequently. And everytime she changes the design I like it more than the previous one. I think she also draw the logos and the banners there by herself. [Reply]

18 September 2006

It seems that Laila is becoming more popular and international. Today I found this post, by Liz Henry, on BlogHer, about Laila.
BlogHer is a blog aggregator for female bloggers (bloggeresses), as well as feminists and those who write for women's rights etc. And this is how they describe their mission:

Actually it is normal that a comunity like BlogHer write about the idea. But the question is how did the idea get all that fame in no time. There may have been some arrangement between some girls at the beginnig, but this is not enough.
I think female bloggers are like any other females, they like to socialise with each other, and pay each other visits. That's why you find a lot of inter-comments between bloggeresses, which is not always the case with male bloggers. And of course, this also proves that women had their own problems in our society and that's why such idea came in reasonance with them, and that's what made them willing to participate. Finally, may be my blogeresses-theory had it effect on attracting more readers to read their blogs too, yet spreading the idea more and more.

16 September 2006

Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy began when Pope Benedict XVI of the Roman Catholic Church gave a lecture on 12 September 2006 at his alma mater, the University of Regensburg in Germany. The lecture was entitled, "Faith, Reason and the University – Memories and Reflections".
The speech was about Holy War, and how true faith isn't supposed to be spread by force. As part of his explication of this distinction, Benedict referred to the specific aspect of Islam that Manuel II considered irrational, namely the practice of forced conversion. Specifically, the Pope quoted Manuel II Palaiologos as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him and His Family) brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
First of all, I belive that cursing, and attacking a couple of churches here and there is not an appropriate response at all. I think using *reason*, and documented response that proves our point of view is the best thing that we shall do now.
I don't think an apology from the Pope is needed because what he said has hurted our feelings, we all know that he has different beliefs than ours and he has the right to criticise ours. However an apology is needed here becuse of his ignorance of Islam. He quoted Manuel II Palaiologos saying that Islam didn't bring anything new but evil and inhuman values. If he is speaking about those general values such as honesty, truth, charity, care for others, etc. then he may be right. But no other religion on earth has invented such values too. Even those man-made religions have the same values, they are there since forever. On the other hand, we may find topics such as the Unity of God, Self Descipline, Relation between humans and God, etc. those topics were covered by Islam in more details than any other religion. We may also find rules concernign Marriage, Zakah (Giving mone to the poor), and many other rules that affect our everyday life, that many other religions don't have. Now, let me ask what are those evil values that he thinks that Islam has brought. I think he need to differentiate between Islam as a religion, and Muslims deeds. Even those deeds are differs from one location to another, and from one age to the previous one. I guess reading a book or two about Islam are not going to hurt, and even if he doesn't have enough money to buy them, there are public libraries out there as well as the Internet. Actually, I have the feeling that the Popes view for Islam, is formed from the TV Shows and the media.
One more thing, about the Islam being spread by the sword. I don't think those thousands who are converted to Islam from all over the world now a days took such decision because of a sword or even a nuclear bomb.
After giving the speech, and seeing the Muslim world reaction towards it, especially the quoted part in it, he said that it's not his own words, but he was just using Manuel II Palaiologos ones. Come on, it's obvious from reading the speech that he used his words just beacuse he believe in them, he also used them in order to make a point. And I think he doesn't need me to tell him that there is a huge difference between saying something said by someone else is order to reply on it, and saying it because you just agree with it.
Now, with respect to the apology, as I said before, we don't want him to apologize just because what he said has hurted our feelings, we are not asking him to be a hypocrite, and say stuff he doesn't belive in just to please us. We just want him to read more about Islam, and to apologize for his ignorance of Islam, if he finds himslef really ignorant of it.
Finally, I am sick of that attitude, when people say something, and after seeing your reaction they apologize even when they are not convinced with it. And after a while they repeat the same thing again and again. What's the point of this Yo-yo attitude!?

15 September 2006

Dr Abdallah schleifer, Distinguished Lecturer in Mass Communication and Director of the Adham Center for Television Journalism at AUC, is a veteran journalist who has covered the Middle East for American and Arab media for more than 20 years. Schleifer, is also an American Jew who turned in his leftist political credentials decades ago to convert to Islam, has been promoting "Islamic Journalism" for years as an alternative to the "destabilizing" Western model of intrusiveness and exposure.

14 September 2006

After seeing all those Laila related posts, I - as well as many other Men - feel that Women here in Egypt and may be the whole world as well have some problems. They feel that there is a discrimination against them. They feel that the society doesn't treat them fairly. But the point is that we do not know what we are supposed to do, and what actions and attitudes we have to change. Also the Lailas are just telling individual stories, which are not easily generalized. So, I need all the Leilas to participate it this post, and tell us frankly the stuff that piss them off, and what are the points that they think we have to change. And then after understanding these points, it is going to be easier for us to argue with them and even change those points that we are going to be convinced with.
P.S. Please, we would like you to make it just direct points. A list of points such as, "we would like you to do so and so", and "stop doing so and so".

13 September 2006

You sure have seen this logo somewhere in the street. It's on people's t-shirts, cars, etc. What the heck is so special about the Marijuana!? Is it a campaign sponsered by the drug dealers here in Egypt!? Are all the Egyptians high now a days!?

09 September 2006

This post is not about that song of the Dolly Dots band with the same name. But it is about an initiative made by a group of female bloggers (Bloggeresses) a couple of days ago. They decided to write about the discrimination girls face - according to their point of view - in the Middle Eastern societies. You may have a look at what they wrote here, however most of it is written in Arabic.

08 September 2006

Today is the mid of Sha'ban, the 15th day of the month of Sha'ban in the Islamic calendar. It is remembered by some Muslims, but for different reasons.
Most of Sunni Muslims believe that Mid-Sha'ban is a night of worship and salvation and it is commonly believed that during this night, Allah prepares the destiny for all people on Earth for the coming year. It's also believed that it is the night when the Qiblah - the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays - was changed from Jerusalem (Al Aqsa Mosque) to Mecca (Kaaba). Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) is the father of the prophets of the three main religions on Earth, however most of the prophets including Moses and Jesus (Peace be Upon them all) are chosen from Isaac's - Son of Ibrahim - branch. Prophet Muhammed (Peace be Upon Him) is - According to the Islamic point of view - the last prophet and he is chosen from Ismael's - other son of Ibrahim - branch. And I think the change of Qiblah towards Mecca - the place where prophet Muhammad was born and lived most of his life - is a symbol for that choice of prophet Muhammad as the final phrophet just as Mecca is the final destination of the Qiblah.
According to Shiia Muslims, it is also believed that on the 15th of Sha'ban, 255 AH (868 CE), Muhammad al-Mahdi was born. The concept of the presence of a chosen person who will save human kind, and achieve justice for the whole world is found in all religions and beliefs. However the personality of that chose person deffers from one religion to another.
In Judaism and Jewish eschatology, the Messiah ("anointed [one]") has traditionally referred to a future Jewish king from the Davidic line who will be "anointed" with holy anointing oil and inducted to rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age. But later on when Prophet Issa (Jesus) was born, Jews believe that Jesus was wrong and wanted to kill him. May be because he didn't meet the specification they wanted him to have. And may be because they found themselves going to loose some privelages that they used to have if they believed in him.
Christians on the other hand belive that Jessus will come back and he is going to be their Saviour or The chosen one.
Muslims have different views of the Saviour, most of Sunni and Shiiy Muslims belive that he is The Mahdi, however Shiits belive that the Mahdi is the Twelve's Imam and he is already born, while Sunnis believe that he is not born yet. Some other Sunni groups belive that Prophet Issa (Jesus) is going to be the one and he is the Mahdi according to their point of view.
Even in a movie such as The Marix triology, a messianic figure referred to as "The One" was featured by Neo. In The Matrix, The One is described this way by the character of Morpheus: "When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. As long as the Matrix exists the human race will never be free".
According to these different views and expectations of the chosen one, people are going to choose different sides to fight with during the last battel - Armageddon - where each team is going to belive that he is on the right side. According to our point of view as Muslims, Prophet Issa (Jessus) is going to join Al Mahdi in his fight and that why it is belived that Muslims and Christians are going to fight on the same side. On the other hand, Jews who did not belive Jesus earlier and wanted to kill him, are expected to fight him later on too. And may be that's why Allah said in the Quran that Christans are the ones who are close to Muslims while Jews are their enemies.

PS. For Jewish and Christian readers, the knowledge in this article is heavily depending on Wikipedia, and I may be biased to the Islamic point of view some how, so if they find anything wrong here please comment on it.

Blogger has problems currently with the commenting system as well as login and accounts. People with old blog accounts are not able to leave comments at those blogs owned by ones with new (beta) accounts and vice-versa. That's I I encourage you to enable Anonymous comments, at least till Blogger staff fix their blog migration problems.

Google Webmaster Tools, is way to know how Google spiders see your site/blog. It tells you many suff such as the HTTP errors found there, content type, and encoding. But what I liked most there is the ability to see the top keywords people use to get to your site.

03 September 2006

WebShotsPro, This website will take screenshots of any url. These screenshot thumbnails can be used anywhere that you have a link. Include them in your blog postings, on a forum post, or next to your search engine results.
URL: http://www.webshotspro.com/

02 September 2006

I've noticed that most of the blogs that I like, are those ones written by female bloggers or bloggeresses. Does the natural attraction between the opposite sexes have something to do with this? Or, it's the females that excel in blogging?

I think it is the second option, but why do females excel in blogging? So, I decided to visit my friend Wikipedia, and ask her about Sociolinguistics, which is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. And here you are some of the Language Styles differences according to gender.

So, that's why bloggeresses tend to share their ideas and thoughts more then men. When we are angry or happy, we don't care if others are aware of it, and do not tend to talk with them about it. But on the other hand, it is normal to see a bloggeress writing a blog post about how she will miss a friend who is going to live abroad for exampel.

"More recently, Deborah Tannen has compared gender differences in language as more similar to 'cultural' differences. Comparing conversational goals, she argued that men have a report style, aiming to communicate factual information, whereas women have a rapport style, more concerned with building and maintaining relationships"

This may be the reason for having more bloggers into technical blogging, you can see males having blogs about configuring a Linux server, programming, and may be historical, and natural facts. But bloggeresses are more into social, and emotional stuff. But you may ask now, what does this have to do with their blogs quality. Ok, let's take myself as an example, I used to write about stuff like Python programming language, Networks Security, but let's face it, how many person out there is interested in such topics. On the other hand, a blog about sharing someones experience in life, sure has more readers interested in it, even when they are from different educational backgrounds, and have various interests. By the way, this deosn't mean that those who are into technical blogs have to stop writing about the topics they like. However, they would better widen the scope of their blogs to hove bigger topics spectrum.

"Questions: Men and women differ in their use of questions in conversations. For men, a question is usually a genuine request for information whereas with women it can often be a rhetorical means of engaging the other’s conversational contribution or of acquiring attention from others conversationally involved, techniques associated with a collaborative approach to language use (Barnes, 1971). Therefore women use questions more frequently (Fitzpatrick, et al., 1995; Todd, 1983)"

I think questions are the honey pots of blog comments. The more questions in your blog posts, the more visitors who are going to comment on it. And the more commentors you have in your blog, the more blogging relations you are going to have. Which will increase your blog popularity, and the discussion itself will help you develop your blogging skills more.

Finally, this doesn't mean that all females are better bloggers than males. There is a huge number of bloggeresses out their who really suck, especially those "Typical Chinese Girl Blog" ones. And for sure, there are many great bloggers out there, myself for example ;)

01 September 2006

It's been about a year, when I started to piss my blog readers off with that Word Verification thing. The Word Verification, in brief, is that letters and numbers written in an ugly way where you have to write them down each time you leave comment on a blog post. It is supposed to stop spammers from leaving advertisements and irrelevant comments in the blogs, and they are doing their job them successfully, but on the other hand it is stopping people from leaving comments too. So I decided to remove it today, actually who cares about a spam here and an advertisement there. They can be removed easily. Anyway, let's give it a try and see.

PS. Some others ban anonymous users from leaving comments. Ok, this can block spammers too. But what about those who do not have accounts at blogspot.com, or who are not even interested in having their own blogs. They still have the right comment on blog posts, but I think they have to write their name, and may be homepage url as well, if they have one.

PS. Aljazeera.net has added the word verification thing to their online votes

The Relative: It all started several months ago when a bunch of young men from the local tribes began showing strange extreme religious behavior we're not familiar with in this area. They did not have influence here in the beginning and their apparent action was limited to hate talk against Shia who they refer to as the "enemies" while we coexisted here and lived peacefully with Shia tribes for centuries. It didn't take long before they translated their rhetoric into violent action, they started to carry out ocassional kidnapping and assassinations against Shia men from neighboring tribes and even attacked Shia neighborhoods deep inside Baghdad after they acquired heavy mortars and katyusha rockets. At this point we began to realize the true identity of those young men and we began to believe that they became part of al-Qaeda. The Shia community showed restraint for a while but then their patience ended and the militias started to fire back…at us unfortunately. The worst escalation happened last week when al-Qaeda snatched a relative of a senior Shia party official near his home, the militia of that party retaliated by kidnapping ten men of a Sunni tribe and there were also incidents of forced displacement on both sides…we don't know if a peaceful settlement can be ever reached.Omar: Did you try to talk to them, intimidate them or do anything to dissuade them from keeping up their dangerous game?
The Relative: We tried, first they told us they were protecting us from Shia death squads and they fooled many of people here with that claim but that's bull shit because now they are the reason death squads are after us.Omar's Father: That doesn't make any sense! You mean the entire tribe and neighboring ones can't control a dozen of militants?The Relative: The problem is that these people behead victims and mutilate bodies, they plant bombs and use dirty tricks…the tribe's men are not adapted to dealing with this kind of horrors. When sheikhs met to arrange for reconciliation the terrorists sent messages telling the sheikhs they were "no longer wanted" and that they were "ripe" for beheading. By the way this was the 2nd meeting between Sunni and Shia sheikhs, the first one was held immediately after the Samarra bombing, it was a purely local initiative without mediation from the government or clerics…we had been good neighbors for ages! The sheikhs signed a pact of honor that forbid bloodshed and displacement and that what kept sectarian violence away from the area until those bastards came in.

Actually this was expected. Imagine a country where the Minority - part of them - continue to attack and kill people who belong to the Majority there. It's normal to see a violent response from the other side, who have more power, especially from the uneducated and immature people there. And that's why Sayed Ali Sistani for example continued to warn Shiits from attacking anyone. But it seems that at a certain point it was hard to stop the people from responding. It's said that the killing accelerated most sharply after the bombing on Feb. 22, 2006 of Imam Al Askari shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting.
Though some observers state that a full blown civil war has not happened, many agree the framework for a potential civil war exists and is seen as a pressing concern. The whole civil war story may have been started with the bloody attacks happened there since August of 2003. You may see here a timeline of the attacks and the violent unrest in Iraq since 2003.
I myself don't see it as a Sunni-Shiiy civil war, for me it's a war between extremist groups from both sides. Not all Iraqi Sunni Arabs belong to Al-Qaeda, or The Association of Muslim Scholars, and not all Shiits there belong to Al Mahdi Army for example. But the problem is, as Omar's relative said, when the silent majorities in both sects cannot have control nor effect on the extremists there